North Side synagogue combats global warming with LEED certified building

Fans of new car smell will take precious little joy in a tour of the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation’s synagogue in Evanston.

The building was carefully planned to exclude as much of volatile organic compounds and formaldehyde adhesives – some of the substances that give “new” its smell – as possible.

The synagogue – three stories, 31,000 square feet and opened in February – is one of the first in the country to seek a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification. And while religion and environmentalism aren’t typically thought to jibe with each other, an increasing number of religious leaders say they see a mandate for stewardship of the environment in scripture.

“In the first chapter of Genesis, God creates a sustainable world,” said Rabbi Brant Rosen, who runs the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation. “God gives it to humanity to tend and to sustain and it’s our responsibility to contribute to the sustenance of the natural world.”

An interfaith group that encourages congregations nationwide to take steps toward energy efficiency and conservation, called Regeneration Project, has swelled to more than 5,000 member congregations, said the group’s executive director, Susan Stephenson. That’s triple the number it had three years ago.

The reason, she said, is simple: “All major faith traditions have a mandate to care for creation.”

Stephenson, like other religious leaders, sees not only a mandate to care for the world, but for humanity. They contend that humanity is deeply affected by environmental conditions. “Global warming is not just an environmental crisis,” Stephenson said. “It’s also a moral crisis.”

Congregations are doing something about their concerns. Resurrection Lutheran Church in Chicago decided to take energy conservation seriously after learning about people in Alaska who had to relocate because of the effects of global warming.

“We realized that (global warming) had already hit and was already impacting people,” said Sara Spoonheim, a member of the church. Church leaders decided that reducing their carbon footprint was a humanitarian responsibility and installed solar hot water heaters in 2006.

So why are congregations picking up the green movement now if it has been mandated by scripture for thousands of years?

One reason is Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth.”

When the Regeneration Project’s Chicago division, Faith in Place, started preaching both faith and environmentalism nine years ago it was “difficult and lonely,” said the Rev. Claire Butterfield, the group’s executive director. But the group distributed 150 copies of the documentary to area congregations and, Butterfield said, “the whole conversation changed.”

Faith in Place has doubled in size in two years, she said.

But what happens in the next two years? Will environmental issue stay as relevant as traditional humanitarian causes such as homelessness and poverty, which religious groups have historically tended to focus on?

People today are more educated about the environment’s impact on people, Spoonheim said. In the past, she said, people had asked, “‘Why are we even talking about the environment when people are starving?”

“And now,” she said, “I think people understand better that people are starving because of the way we’re treating the environment, because of the way we’re growing corn for fuel instead of for people to eat and those sorts of choices that we’re making. Maybe the question is, ‘Is the environmental issue just kind of the flavor of the month?’ I don’t think so. I think churches are really seeing this as part of their moral responsibility.”

But for churches to continue to make progress in environmentalism, many say their congregations will have to take on bigger and bigger projects.

In fewer than two years, St. John’s Episcopal Church in Chicago converted to energy-efficient light bulbs, gave up paper plates and napkins, and started buying sustainably harvested Palms for use on Palm Sunday, said the Rev. Kara Wagner Sherer, the church’s rector.

But they’re not done. The next step is the biggest yet: an energy audit of the church house, which was built in 1888. After all, she said, “You can only change the light bulbs once.”

But although plenty of congregations are just starting to consider the environment, some have been at it much longer.

The Benedictine women at Holy Wisdom Monastery in Madison, Wis., began converting their farmland to prairie plants in 1996 in an effort to clean up Lake Mendota, said the monastery’s prioress, Sister Mary David Walgenbach.

Fertilizers from the monastery’s fields had polluted the lake, she said. The motivation was not only environmental, but also to contribute to public health.

While not many congregations have built new synagogues, churches or mosques aiming to reduce a carbon footprint, plenty have taken smaller steps – from installing solar hot water heaters to encouraging congregants to ride their bikes to work.

The challenge for many congregations now, they realize, is to make sure the environmental work they’ve begun continues.

A scroll down the home page of Rabbi Rosen’s blog in Evanston reveals just about what you’d expect – posts on Cyclone Nargis, the Rwandan genocide and on Israel and Palestine.

But there, in the middle of it all, is this: “What’s your footprint?”